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Snell's law (also known as the Snell–Descartes law, the ibn-Sahl law, [1] and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or air.
The ordinary law of refraction was at that time attributed to René Descartes (d. 1650), who had tried to explain it by supposing that light was a force that propagated instantaneously, or that light was analogous to a tennis ball that traveled faster in the denser medium, either premise being inconsistent with Fermat's.
He showed by using geometric construction and the law of refraction (also known as Descartes' law, or more commonly Snell's law outside France) that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42 degrees (i.e., the angle subtended at the eye by the edge of the rainbow and the ray passing from the sun through the rainbow's centre is 42°).
Willebrord Snellius (1580–1626) found the mathematical law of refraction, now known as Snell's law, in 1621. Subsequently, René Descartes (1596–1650) showed, by using geometric construction and the law of refraction (also known as Descartes' law), that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42° (i.e. the angle subtended at the eye by the edge ...
Descartes' third model creates a mathematical equation for the Law of Refraction, characterized by the angle of incidence equalling the angle of refraction. In today's notation, the law of refraction states, sin i = n sin r, where i is the angle of incidence, r is the angle of refraction, and n is the index of refraction. Using a tennis ball ...
Since the Fresnel equations were developed for optics, they are usually given for non-magnetic materials. Dividing ( 4) by ( 5 )) yields. For non-magnetic media we can substitute the vacuum permeability μ0 for μ, so that that is, the admittances are simply proportional to the corresponding refractive indices.
In the book, Newton argued that the geometric nature of reflection and refraction of light could only be explained if light were made of particles because waves do not tend to travel in straight lines. Newton's corpuscular theory was an elaboration of his view of reality as interactions of material points through forces.
Since the angle of refraction is β, Snell's law gives us sin(2β − φ) = n sin β, where n = 1.333 is the refractive index of water. Solving for φ, we get φ = 2β − arcsin(n sin β). The rainbow will occur where the angle φ is maximum with respect to the angle β. Therefore, from calculus, we can set dφ/dβ = 0, and solve for β, which ...